The Mineola Railers Square Dance Club was formed in late 2015. The Club held its first dance on January 11, 2016. Dance was held at the American Legion Hall on US HWY 80 East, Mineola, Texas with Tim Tyl of White Oak, Texas calling. On March 7, 2016 the club began our "Learn to Dance" program.

The club was formed by Howard and Sandra Rowan, with the help of many friends and supporters. Tim Tyl as club caller has also given his support to this endeavor to help make it a success. The club started out with two members and a club caller. Its success will be based on where it goes from there.

The Mission of the Mineola Railers SDC is to support the physical and mental benefits of dancing.  In particular our mission is to support square dance. Secondly, we seek to preserve the heritage of square dance. Square dance is recognized by the United States of America as its official dance form. Along with the USA it has been chosen by 33 states as their official dance with Texas being one of those states.

Our goals will be to continually evaluate our techniques of promoting square dance and to discover what will work best for our club.  Sandra and I have attended many workshops, roundhouse discussions, and listened to the ideas and suggestions of countless individuals on how to make square dance more attractive to new dancers and to what we are doing that is contributing to the decline in the numbers of dancers nationwide. We have witnessed the results of many of these suggestions and ideas.  We recognize that what works best in this area or for this club may or may not work in other areas or for different clubs. What we intend to do is to be open minded and find the things that will work for us. We by no means believe that we hold all the answers, but we do believe we must do something different than what we have been doing. One of our favorite sayings (and if you know us you know we have a lot of favorite sayings) is "How long can we continue to do things the same way and expect different results".  That said, if it is working for your club use it, but if you are not satisfied with the growth of your club please get out there and try something different until you find what will work for you.

You may ask what are these ideas that we will be trying.  They range from the very subtle, to things just entirely out of the box or in this case out of the square. I would like to suggest you just keep a close eye on the Mineola Railers and as they become apparent you will recognize them.  But, be reassured that when we discovery something that makes a big impact for us we will share it with anyone that will listen.

The Mineola Railers SDC does not intend to hold traditional square dance lessons.  We recognize that from the time someone steps on the dance floor and does their first “left allemande” they are square dancers.  What we will do is offer a "Learn to Dance" program that will be geared to improving the dancers' proficiency no matter if they have just done their first “do-sa-do” or if they are “cross trail through” the square all night long.